The Northern Estonian Regional Hospital has complained to Eesti Päevaleht Online that the foreigners who scarper before paying for the medical services they have to keep giving them are causing them headaches of their own.“The problem with Johnny Foreigner,” says hospital board member Eve Karmo, “is that he's generally shipped to our door by ambulance with nothing on him to tell us who he is and in no fit state to tell us himself.”
Karmo singles out a very particular kind of foreigner as being of the troublesome variety: “These English lads who come here, waste all of their money on goodness knows what kind of 'entertainment', fall arse over tit and get sent to us. We stitch them up, they disappear and the only thing we can put on the unpaid bill is 'foreigner', or at best 'British citizen'.”
Karmo says that even if they do manage to make out a name, very few visitors from abroad who are brought to the hospital have their EU health insurance card on them or anything else indicating that they are insured, assuming they are in the first place. In the case of the other major problem group for the hospital - Estonia's eastern neighbours - they are unlikely to have any, as they are often paid in brown paper envelopes.
While praising embassies for the help they provide in identifying these shameless stealers of health services, Karmo would much rather the assistance wasn't required in the first place. She advises all Estonian travellers (presumably including those planning on spending all of their time getting pissed and ending up in hospital) to stock up on health insurance whenever they go abroad, even if it is within the EU.
“Your health insurance card will cover first aid, but not much else. If you're halfway up a mountain skiing somewhere and take a tumble and have to be airlifted to Estonia flat on your back, things could get quite expensive.”
Please note: translations of direct quotes in this article may be slightly more colourful than the originals.
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